


Ebbs and Flows

by toli-a (togina)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-06
Updated: 2016-05-06
Packaged: 2018-06-07 05:31:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6787519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/toli-a
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam brings them to the cabin, for a little quiet - and maybe for a little peace.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ebbs and Flows

**Author's Note:**

> As always, reposted from tumblr and beta'ed by the magnificent cabloom.

“Did you know they discover over a thousand new animals in the ocean every year?” Bucky asks, reading from the kindle Sam is fairly certain he’s never going to get back.  “According to marine scientists, there may still be whales out there that no one has seen.”

Sam isn’t sure what he regrets more: taking his great-uncle up on the offer of a cabin on the northwest coast, or spending the misty and cold vacation surrounded by men who  _ never stop reading _ .

“People are still whaling,” Steve interjects, one ear bud still in his ear, the other hanging around his neck.  Bucky prefers books—has always preferred books, apparently, though Steve says it used to be Martians and alien spaceships whereas now it’s all  _ facts _ , truths that can connect James Barnes to the world.  Steve prefers podcasts, though he still refers to them as ‘broadcasts’ and smirks when Sam can’t help but correct him.  “Do you know how many ecosystems will be destroyed, if we keep plundering the oceans?”

Sam would have thought that Steve would be the reader, giving that he was always home sick, and deaf in one ear, but when he’d asked Barnes about it, the other man had rolled his metal shoulder and shrugged.  Frowned off into the distance, trying to pull loose a memory, and then nodded sharply.  “Stevie’d get headaches,” he informed Sam.  “Can’t read with a headache.”

“Migraines,” Steve had agreed, coming into the kitchen and resting a hand on Barnes’s metal shoulder, leaning over his friend to grab a muffin from the platter on the table.  “Bucky used to bring books home from the library, read to me until his voice gave out.  Won’t do it anymore though,” he griped, smiling at Barnes’s exasperated face.

“They’ve got  _ people  _ for that now,” Barnes retorted, leaning his head back against Steve’s ribs.  “And you haven’t had a migraine since 1942.”

They’ve been at the cabin for a week, now, and Sam has learned more than he ever wanted to about marine life and maritime injustice in the world.  He also briefly met Namor—who had heard about the Winter Soldier and surfaced to check in on his old friends—which was incredible and very, very frightening all at once.  At least Namor didn’t want to teach Sam about different kinds of gulls, or the increasing problems caused by plastic in the ocean.

Still, Steve and Barnes go out sometimes without the books (on Sam’s kindle) or the headphones (also Sam’s), just before dawn when the coast and sea blend into a single, formless grey.  Sam doesn’t follow them, then; he sits on the porch with his coffee, because he has his own demons, and burying Riley may have kept Sam sane but it wouldn’t help him heal.

So he sits, and he watches the waves roll past the dark rocks and into the sand, watches the sun struggle to burn through the mist pouring in from the sea.  And he watches Steve with Bucky, sometimes, when they settle on one of the boulders like ungainly seabirds (great black-backed gulls), and Steve pulls a battered paperback—one of the terrible romances that Sam’s uncle apparently read, because Steve knows Bucky can’t handle suspense or androids or spies—out of his jacket and hands it over to Bucky, a hopeful grin curling at the corner of his mouth.

And Sam can’t hear them, over the crash of the ocean and the muffling fog (over the ache in his chest, because Riley might be buried deep in Sam’s mind but he’s also  _ gone _ , a hollow pain under Sam’s ribs), but he knows Barnes always mutters, “Punk,” right before giving in, and he can see well enough when Steve wraps his arms around Bucky, settling his head on Bucky’s shoulder as the other man begins to read.


End file.
